Wednesday, November 2, 2016

It's really hard to tell stories of downfall and doom in a video game, since so many games revolve around fulfilling power fantasies, at best creating a sense of ludo-narrative dissonance when trying to reach for that feat. It's even harder to tell a story by gameplay mechanics as well as written dialogue. If all this succeeds, you get a product like "The Banner Saga", the first part of (currently) two tactical roleplaying games.

Sunday, October 30, 2016

We’ve tackled the North and the lands of Essos. Now our popular series of podcasts predicting the events of The Winds of Winter returns
with a look at what Northern partisans such as ourselves would
call “the South” — aka the rest(eros) of Westeros! With our usual
emphasis on thematic and narrative resonance — and our usual caveat that
this is all just fun speculation — we’re offering our theories on the
fates of every major player and region. What does Book Six hold in store
for our POV characters Sansa Stark, Cersei Lannister, Jon Connington,
Arianne Martell, Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister, Areo Hotah (hey,
blame George), Samwell Tarly, and Aeron “the Damphair” Greyjoy? What
about key supporting cast members like Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish, the
Tyrells, the Faith Militant, Doran Martell, the Sand Snakes, (f)Aegon
Targaryen, Varys, Catelyn “Lady Stoneheart” Stark, Brynden “the
Blackfish” Tully, Tommen and Myrcella Lannister, Walder Frey, and so on?
What fates will befall King’s Landing, Oldtown, Highgarden, Storm’s
End, Sunspear, and Casterly Rock? And of course, where and when will the
Others and the dragons strike first? We’re taking our best guesses. See
what you think!

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Welcome to the Supreme Court of Westeros! Every week, three pressing
questions from the community will be answered by the esteemed judges
Stefan (from your very own Nerdstream Era) and Amin (from A Podcast of
Ice and Fire). The rules are simple: we take three questions, and one of
us writes a measured analysis. The other one writes a shorter opinion,
either concurring or dissenting. The catch is that every week a third
judge from the fandom will join us and also write a dissenting or
concurring opinion. So if you think you're up to the task - write us an
email to stefan_sasse@gmx.de, leave a comment in the post, ask in the APOIAF-forum or contact Amin at his tumblr.
Discussion is by no means limited to the court itself, though - feel
free to discuss our rulings in the commentary section and ask your own
questions through the channels above.

One word on spoilers: we assume that you read all the books, including
the Hedge Knight short stories, and watched the current TV episodes. We
don't include the spoiler chapters from various sources in the
discussion, with the notable exception of Theon I, which was supposed to
be in "A Dance with Dragons" anyway.

Please note that our new ebook is
up and available on Amazon, collecting the first 60 rulings and the
best comments in one place. It's only 5,99$, so what are you waiting
for?

And now, up to ruling 147! Our guest
judge this week is Rick Davids, a student of Linguistics from Berlin who currrently resides in Bielefeld. He's been a fan of the books for well over a decade now. He's honored to make his second appearance on the court.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Let me just say at the outset, I used to LOVE grimdark.
Huge fan of Warhammer (both 40k and Fantasy), read all of
the “groundbreaking, adult” graphic novels of the late 80s/90s, bought
as many of White Wolf’s RPG books as I could, even if I almost never got
to play them, and so on and so forth. But, and I don’t mean this at all
in a condescending way, I matured out of it. This stuff that had spoke
to me when I was a teenager was less appealing now that I’m in my early
30s.A lot of this of this comes from the way that my personality
works. I’m fundamentally an academic and a policy wonk and a reformer,
which means when I see a bad situation either in real life or in media,
my mind immediately goes to how it could be fixed, how it can be
improved - I look at Westeros and start thinking about economic
development plans, after all. Grimdark, however, requires stasis in
order to maintain mood and atmosphere and setting:

“Forget
the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten,
never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and
understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war.”

You can see the contradiction there. Another
big part of this is my realization, after a while, that grimdark
is ultimately just as as sterile and fomulaic and predictable as its
opposite. If the universe is always doomed, if the bad guys are always
going to win, then there’s no dramatic tension, no possibility of
surprise or innovation beyond a point. One of the truths I feel
I’ve stumbled across over the years is that the essence of good
storytelling isn’t found in extremes, but in variation. No matter
whether it’s grimdark or its opposite, too much of the same thing leads
to habituation and a decrease in effectiveness. The result is either
apathy or a constant arms-race of intensity that eventually becomes
ridiculous.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Welcome to the Supreme Court of Westeros! Every week, three pressing
questions from the community will be answered by the esteemed judges
Stefan (from your very own Nerdstream Era) and Amin (from A Podcast of
Ice and Fire). The rules are simple: we take three questions, and one of
us writes a measured analysis. The other one writes a shorter opinion,
either concurring or dissenting. The catch is that every week a third
judge from the fandom will join us and also write a dissenting or
concurring opinion. So if you think you're up to the task - write us an
email to stefan_sasse@gmx.de, leave a comment in the post, ask in the APOIAF-forum or contact Amin at his tumblr.
Discussion is by no means limited to the court itself, though - feel
free to discuss our rulings in the commentary section and ask your own
questions through the channels above.

One word on spoilers: we assume that you read all the books, including
the Hedge Knight short stories, and watched the current TV episodes. We
don't include the spoiler chapters from various sources in the
discussion, with the notable exception of Theon I, which was supposed to
be in "A Dance with Dragons" anyway.

Please note that our new ebook is
up and available on Amazon, collecting the first 60 rulings and the
best comments in one place. It's only 5,99$, so what are you waiting
for?

And now, up to ruling 146! Our guest
judge this week is Bobby, who is a member of the community who occasionally posts about ASOIAF at whereoldgodsrule.tumblr.com.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Welcome to the Supreme Court of Westeros! Every week, three pressing
questions from the community will be answered by the esteemed judges
Stefan (from your very own Nerdstream Era) and Amin (from A Podcast of
Ice and Fire). The rules are simple: we take three questions, and one of
us writes a measured analysis. The other one writes a shorter opinion,
either concurring or dissenting. The catch is that every week a third
judge from the fandom will join us and also write a dissenting or
concurring opinion. So if you think you're up to the task - write us an
email to stefan_sasse@gmx.de, leave a comment in the post, ask in the APOIAF-forum or contact Amin at his tumblr.
Discussion is by no means limited to the court itself, though - feel
free to discuss our rulings in the commentary section and ask your own
questions through the channels above.

One word on spoilers: we assume that you read all the books, including
the Hedge Knight short stories, and watched the current TV episodes. We
don't include the spoiler chapters from various sources in the
discussion, with the notable exception of Theon I, which was supposed to
be in "A Dance with Dragons" anyway.

Please note that our new ebook is
up and available on Amazon, collecting the first 60 rulings and the
best comments in one place. It's only 5,99$, so what are you waiting
for?

And now, up to ruling 144! Our guest
judge this week is Johnny from Philadelphia. He began reading the series after the 1st season of Game of Thrones and began listening to BLAH and APOIAF shortly thereafter. He is on the forums at APOIAF as The Smiling Knight. This is his fourth time as a member of the Supreme Court of Westeros.

Thursday, October 6, 2016

I just finished watching the first season of "Jessica Jones", and I mostly kept going to get a full picture, not because it was an especially joyous ride, so you maybe shouldn't follow in my footsteps here. What really egged me about the show, beside some other points of course, was the baffingly bad dialogue. I wanted to share an example of that with you and explain why it is so bad and try to get a bit more into the question when dialogue is to be considered bad. If you want to watch "Jessica Jones" spoilerfree, you'll have to stop reading here, but what I tell you about the plot here is really very light on spoilers, so you might just go ahead anyway.

Saturday, September 24, 2016

We’re turing the podcast Upside Down this episode with an in-depth discussion of Stranger Things,
the hit summer thriller series from Netflix and the Duffer Brothers.
Wearing its many, many genre influences on its sleeve so proudly that
said sleeves might as well have had “STEVEN SPIELBERG” and “STEPHEN
KING” directly embroidered on them, the show gave its fans an ‘80s
nostalgia fix like few others. But is there more to the whole than the
sum of its parts? Sean and Stefan explore that question at length,
touching on related issues such as the nature of horror, the hegemony of
nerd culture, the ever-increasing prominence of the ‘80s in
contemporary entertainment, and of course the show’s similarities with
and differences from the approach to genre taken by A Song of Ice and
Fire and Game of Thrones. Grab your D&D dice and roll for initiative with us!

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

In case you never heard of "Stellaris", you're either living under a rock or really aren't that much into really complex and heavy strategy games that need real effort and time to learn. Damn, that came out wrong. So, I'll take it you don't know Stellaris. It's a game by renowned studio Paradox Interactive (Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis, Skylines, among others) in the 4x genre, allowing you to guide a civilization from its earliest FTL days to a sprawling intergalactic empire. As you marrily colonize new planets, research new techs and observe strange phenomena, you're range of options grows and your empire gains in strength, eventually resulting into First Contact with other civilizations and even war. So far, so good. But the game also has some really interesting other features, among the "crisis". And that one's a real bitch.